South Korea’s penetration rate of smartphones ranked number one in the world for the first time in 2012.

According to U.S. market researcher Strategy Analytics, South Korea’s smartphone penetration rate stood at 67-point-six percent last year. The figure was nearly five times larger than the average global penetration rate of 14-point-eight percent and up more than ten percentage points than Norway which came in second with 55 percent.

In 2011, South Korea’s smartphone penetrate rate stood at around 38 percent. The figure put South Korea in fourth place after Hong Kong, Sweden and Singapore.

In 2007, South Korea’s smartphone penetration rate stood at only seven-tenths of a percent then jumped to two percent in 2009 before surging to 14 percent in 2010.

Strategy Analytics attributed South Korea’s number one rate to the swift establishment of a fourth-generation long-term evolution wireless broadband network.